by Adam Matlow
“Well, we’re making progress. I think,” said Marcus. “I guess we follow this corridor and see where it leads?”
Jax projected into the air in front of the group. “The conduits on the wall seem to lead towards a central point, approximately five-hundred meters from our current position. It could lead to a control room of some kind. I may be able to access the internal systems from there.”
Marcus looked around at everyone, who, in absence of a better idea all indicated their agreement.
“Let’s do it,” said Marcus as he strode off along the corridor.
There was a polite cough from behind him. Marcus stopped and turned around. Vana casually pointed in the opposite direction to where he had been heading.
“The-- um, conduits lead this way,” she said quietly.
“I knew that,” said Marcus turning on his heels and heading back. “Just making sure you were paying attention. Well done. So, I’ll now just walk this way. The correct way. Obviously.”
Kali stifled a snicker and Marcus jabbed her in the ribs on his way past.
“I’d like to see you do better,” he muttered under his breath at her.
They headed out, and Marcus walked in line with Vana.
“What is this place?” he asked.
“I think these are service tunnels of some kind. They probably criss-cross the whole of Sentinel. We could get almost everywhere via them. If we can get a hold of a map - otherwise navigating them may be hard.”
“Yeah, everything here does kinda look the same. It’d be easy to get lost.”
Despite having not met any resistance, they moved cautiously. Vickers bringing up the rear, his weapon always at the ready. It took an hour before they reached a nexus point, where many conduits from every direction merged into one area. They ran along a wall and into a narrow conduit, barely a meter wide and about the same in height. Marcus got on his hands and knees and peered into the darkness. He could see a faint pinprick of light at the far end, but with no frame of reference, he couldn’t tell how long it was.
His palms became clammy and a knot formed in the pit of his stomach. He knew what Vana was going to suggest next.
“I’m sorry Marcus,” she said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “This will be the quickest way. It could take hours to backtrack to find another way through.”
“Okay, okay,” Marcus said, taking a few deep breaths and jogging on the spot. “I can do this.”
“Do you want me to go in first?” asked Vana
“Oh god no,” he replied quickly, “I need to be able to see the way out. If there’s someone in front of me and someone behind me it’ll be far worse. No, I need to get in there and power my way through.”
Marcus psyched himself up.
It’s not far, I can do this. Just put your head down, try not to think about being trapped in the middle of a pipe on an alien space station, millions of miles from home.
Surprisingly these thoughts didn’t make him feel any better.
Kali leant down to peer through the tunnel and whistled, “that is a long way isn’t it?” she said mockingly, “but have no fear, I’ll be right behind you.”
“Not helping Kali,” said Marcus taking long deep breaths, as if he was about to jump into a pool. “If I get stuck you’re going to have to give me a gentle nudge.”
“Don’t worry, if you get stuck I’ll jam the barrel of my gun up your--”
“I get the picture,” he interrupted. “Can we get on with it before I change my mind?”
Marcus tried not to think about what he was doing.
Steeling himself, he crawled into the tunnel. As the light in his peripheral vision turned to blackness he felt a rising panic. He had barely crawled a meter and already he wanted to turn back, but he pressed on. He fixated on the light in front of him and crawled as fast as he could towards it. Behind him, as promised was Kali. He felt the knot in his stomach tighten and sweat poured from his forehead. He used his jacket sleeve to wipe most of it away, but still, some got in his eyes, causing his vision to blur. This only added to his panic.
“How you doing Marcus?” asked Kali. His panting had probably tipped her off to his current state.
There wasn’t enough room for him to turn properly to speak to her, and even if there were, he wasn’t going to take his eyes from the way out of here. He was afraid if he looked away that when he looked back it would be gone.
“Oh, just peachy,” he said through gritted teeth, “couldn’t be having more fun.”
“Well, whilst I’ve got your attention,” she lowered her voice to a whisper, “what do you think about Vana?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, I think she’s pretty cute.”
“Really, I hadn’t noticed,” lied Marcus.
“You must have. She’s so different. You know... exciting.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. Hey, has she said anything about me?”
“Like what?”
“You know, has she mentioned me at all? Has she asked you about me?”
“I don’t think so,” replied Marcus. Her interest in Vana had caught him off guard.
“Because I was talking to her earlier and there was this kinda… spark, you know.”
“Between you two?” Marcus felt a slight pang of jealousy. He hadn’t realised Kali felt that way about her. Certainly, he’d never had the impression Vana felt the same way. Then again, he never was quite sure what was going on inside Vana’s head.
“If we manage to survive this then I may have to do something about that,” she continued. “I wonder how old she is? I mean she looks about twenty-five, but I’m not sure if that means anything for an alien.”
“She did tell me her species live longer than humans. Considerably longer. That’s all she would tell me when I asked.”
“You mean she could be much older?”
“Maybe decades.”
“She looks good for her age if so,” Kali continued, “I thought I would ask you what you reckoned my chances were, since you had spent a lot more time with her than any of us.”
“I honestly don’t know,” said Marcus, as he crawled out of the other end of the tunnel and stood, stretching his legs in the wide-open space. He reached his hand out to Kali as she emerged from the tunnel behind him, and helped her up.
“That wasn’t so bad, now was it?” she said.
“Wait a minute,” said Marcus, “did you…”
“You’re welcome,” said Kali, a wide grin on her face.
“You mean to say, all that stuff you said in there about Vana wasn’t true?”
“I guess you’ll never know,” she said, shooting him a wink.
“Thanks,” said Marcus softly. “I needed that.”
“Don’t tell anyone I got soft with you or I’ll break your legs,” she whispered as she went to help the others out of the tunnel.
They had emerged into another corridor, which looked much like the last one. Ahead of them, a darkened doorway loomed. Kali shone her flashlight into it and walked in slowly. Mendez put a hand on Marcus’s shoulder and stopped him from following her, instead he readied his rifle and moved in behind Kali. When they were a few meters into the room the lights came on. Slowly at first, but grew in intensity until everything was visible. Marcus went next, followed by Doc and Amara, who headed straight for a console sat in the centre of the room. Vickers stood by the door and guarded it, glancing up and down the corridor and shifting uneasily on his feet.
“Something wrong?” Kali asked him.
“Just a feeling. Like we’re being watched. It’s probably nothing.”
“It’s like the walls have eyes.”
The room was ten meters square and covered wall to ceiling in conduits which coalesced at a large console at the centre of the room. Vana approached the console and placed Jax on top. It sprang to life, projecting images and swaths of text into the air around it.
“Looks like Jax has this place figured
out already,” said Kali, as she watched the projections flitter in and out of existence around the console.
“I have not yet attempted the interface,” said Jax. “The console seems to be reacting to our presence and has activated itself.”
“That’s not at all worrying,” said Marcus, taking a large step away from the machine.
“Jax, can you interface with this?” asked Vana.
“One moment,” he replied - his projection rapidly displaying ever-changing information. “I have gained access to some low-level systems and information. I am confident given time I could gain more significant access.”
Doc paced around the console, examining it closely. “Have you found anything at your current level of access that would be useful now?” he asked.
“There appears to be a Krall datacache here, separate to the Sentinel’s system, and much easier to penetrate. Accessing now… I have located what looks to be a holding area nearby. A large amount of power has been routed to that section and drones have been allocated to secure it.”
“Drones?” asked Marcus.
“Autonomous self-contained machines, used primarily for maintenance. These drones appear to have been outfitted with weaponry, as well as additional shielding.”
“Oh, don’t they sound delightful.” Marcus shook his head and sighed.
“I calculate a high probability Davon is holding prisoners at that location.”
“Can you show me where this is?” Marcus asked, waving his hand at the projection. The projection became a map seen from above. White lines on a black background traced the outlines of rooms around them. Several red dots clustered around the centre - which Marcus assumed was their current location. The map zoomed out slowly, revealing several more dots. A handful at first, then dozens. Soon the whole section was red.
“My god, how many people has he got in there?” said Kali, her mouth agape.
A line appeared on the map, tracing a route from their current location to the holding area. “I must point out this equipment does not distinguish between different life signs. I cannot tell who is in that room.” said Jax.
Marcus put his hands on his waist and looked at the projection. “So, you mean that could either be a room full of the missing people from the settlements, or a room full of Krall soldiers?”
“Yes, and there’s no way to tell from here.”
“Well there’s only one way to find out,” said Kali. “We need to get into that room.”
Vana grabbed Kali by the arm. “The mission comes first,” she said. “We can’t risk you being detected before we’re in place to sabotage the Sentinel.”
Kali shook her arm free. “If those are our people in there I’m not leaving them behind. We have to do something.”
“Kali’s right,” said Amara. “We can’t leave them here. I’ve seen what Davon does to people. We can’t let them suffer. Not like I did.”
“Look,” said Vana. “We’ve only gotten this far because we haven’t been detected. If Davon finds out we’re here, we’ll have no chance of destroying this place.”
“You do what you need to do,” huffed Kali. “I’m going for those people.”
“I’m coming too,” said Amara. Kali pulled a pistol from her belt and handed it to her, and nodded with approval.
Vana’s face reddened and she searched for something to say. Marcus who had been studying the map projected by Jax turned to speak.
“Look, it seems to me like we have three things we need to take care of. First, we need to work out who is in that room and help them if we can. Second, we need to find a way to take this place out - I’m sure Vana already has a plan for that. Finally, and this one is my personal favourite; we need to find a way home. I don’t know what Vana’s plan is, but I’m assuming it won’t take all of us to do it. So why don’t we split up? I’ll head with Vana to do the whole sabotage thing. Kali and Amara, you can scout the holding area to see what we’re dealing with. Mendez can back you up. Doc, you stay here with Vickers and see what you can get from this console. Perhaps there’s a way out of here buried somewhere in all that data. So, everyone, how does that sound?”
“Well look who put his big-boy pants on today,” mocked Kali. “It beats standing around here arguing.”
“It wouldn’t be wise for us to split up now,” said Doc. He pushed his glasses onto his forehead and rubbed his eyes. “Vana has at least some familiarity with the Sentinel, but as for the rest of us, we’re groping about in the dark. We need to keep everyone together.”
Marcus paced around the small room, his arms crossed. Doc was right, it was a risk. But the Sentinel was huge, to be able to explore even a small part of it would require more time than they had. They had to take the risk.
“Okay,” he said coming to a standstill. “How about this. We split up, do a spot of reconnaissance, and all meet back here in three hours? Then we can decide what we’re going to do, and we can do it as a group. Okay?”
There were murmurs of agreement from the group and no dissenting voices. Marcus took that as an endorsement of his plan.
“It’s settled then,” said Marcus. “Let’s get a move on. Lead the way Vana.”
Marcus started to walk towards the door, but Vana held out her arm and placed a hand on his chest to stop him. “Marcus, wait, I can take care of my side of things on my own. You should stay here and help Kali, or Doc.”
“Not a chance in hell,” he replied. “You’re not doing this on your own. Besides, we have no idea who or what is out there. If something happens to you, we’ll have no way of getting home.”
“But--”
“No but’s. Decision made. Now let’s go.”
Vana tried to protest, but Marcus was already halfway out of the room. Vana grabbed Jax from the console and chased after him.
Doc waved to try and get Vana’s attention. “Won’t I need Jax here with me to decipher this console?” he said.
Vana turned to Doc but kept moving back towards the exit. “No, he’s tied into that system now, so he doesn’t need to be here. Simply talk and he’ll be able to hear you.”
“Channel four on the radio’s,” shouted Kali as Vana chased after Marcus. “Check in every thirty minutes or we’ll assume you’ve been killed in some horrific way.”
“Don’t even joke about it,” shouted Marcus from outside the room. “Nobody do anything stupid.” Vana trotted beside him. He could feel her eyes burning into the back of his head. He didn’t stop but glanced across at her.
“I sense you’re not happy with me coming along?”
“Things haven’t exactly gone to plan so far. I can’t predict what’s going to happen. The only thing I do know with any certainty is it will be very dangerous.”
“All the more reason for someone else to come along. I’ve got your back.”
Her stony-faced composure cracked for a moment, and Marcus detected the faint creases of a smile forming on her face.
“I really don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been at the impact site that day. It seems like all I’ve done is stumble from one disaster to another, and I’ve dragged you, Kali, Doc-- everyone, into this mess with me.”
“We were already in a mess. I doubt Davon was ever going to just up-sticks and leave. You’ve given us a way to fight him - a way we would never have been able to achieve on our own. And if at the end of this, it isn’t enough. If we fail and the Earth is wiped out, at least we can meet the end knowing we did everything we could.”
“The universe could do with a few more people like you Marcus. Perhaps we wouldn’t be in this mess if that were the case.”
“Funny,” smiled Marcus. “Because it’s usually me that causes all the problems.”
Chapter Sixteen
“So, where are we heading?” asked Marcus. He strode alongside Vana as they navigated the seemingly endless and identical corridors. He had given up trying to keep track of where they were, but suspected Vana knew exactly where she was heading and so
followed her lead.
“There’s a control room at the centre of this place housing a vital component. We’re going to go break it.”
“Now that’s a plan I can get behind.” Marcus clapped his hands together and rubbed them expectantly. “I don’t understand much of what’s going on around here, but I understand the concept of smashing something to bits.”
“Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that,” said Vana. She smiled wryly.
“I got the feeling it would be, but thank you anyway for dumbing it down so I could understand.”
They reached another intersection, this one split into three different directions. Vana took the leftmost path and pushed onwards. This wasn’t at all what Marcus was expecting when he imagined what it would be like to be onboard an alien space station. It all looked rather ordinary to him. If it wasn’t for the green and silver glyphs etched into the walls at the various intersections, he could have been fooled into thinking he was still on Earth.
The glyphs themselves piqued Marcus’s curiosity though and were the only things that seemed to change as they navigated the maze of corridors. They appeared when the pair reached a junction and would fade away moments after choosing one to follow. Vana seemed to understand them, as she would occasionally pause to read them before selecting a path. Although there was no way for Marcus to be sure, the symbols did strike an uncanny resemblance to the one’s Jax had projected in the past; and from the screens on Vana’s crashed ship.
As they rounded the next corner, something metallic ahead of them came into view. It caught Marcus off-guard. He took a sharp intake of breath and grabbed Vana and dragged her back around the corner, his heart pumping furiously. A few moments passed while he gathered his wits and peeked out around the corner at the object in the corridor. Vana squeezed her head underneath his arm and peered around the corner with him.